Posted on 09/21/2007 11:30:40 AM PDT by jmc813
Motorists in Colorado are expressing outrage over a weekend stunt in Gilpin County, about an hour's drive west of Denver, where highway checkpoints were set up so a private organization could ask for samples of blood and saliva.
"I don't think they're authorized to do what they're doing, and I view it as a gross violation of law-enforcement protocol," Roberto Sequeira, 51, told reporters for the Denver Post.
He said he and his wife were "detained" for about 15 minutes even after they protested they wanted to get home because of a sleepy child in their car.
(Story continues below)
Sheriff's officials were apologizing after they helped set up and run five separate checkpoints over the weekend.
They said workers for the Institute for Research and Evaluation were overly persistent in their demands of innocent travelers.
"It was like a telemarketer that you couldn't hang up on," Undersheriff John Bayne told the newspaper.
Sgt. Bob Enney said the deputies' assistance to the organization involved stopping motorists at the sites along Colorado Highway 119 for "surveys" on any drug or alcohol use. Surveyors also requested that motorists submit to breath, blood and saliva tests.
Enney said several hundred motorists were tested, and some later complained.
Sequeira said he repeatedly asked if the questioners were law enforcement officials and said he was not interested in participating in the study, but still was not given clearance to leave.
He told the newspaper that he and his family were approached by two researchers, and even after his repeated refusals, officials offered his wife, who was driving, $100 to get the couple to take part in a breath test.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
ping
They said workers for the Institute for Research and Evaluation were overly persistent in their demands of innocent travelers.
Oh, how passages like that make me wish I'd gone to law school!
There's a lot of settlement money to be made on this one!
wow, sounds like a whole laundry list of laws broken.
Sure, just take my underwear.
>> highway checkpoints were set up so a private organization could ask for samples of blood and saliva.
Lessee... False arrest, unlawful search and seizure, assault under color of authority.... And yet, there’s no mention in the article of the employees of this private organization and the participating deputies being arrested. How odd....
You have blood and saliva in your underwear?
That's OK. They only need samples from one person.
Around these parts the volunteer fire depts will descend on an intersection and beg for money, it kind of pisses me off, at least have a car wash or something.
The researchers need to do own their work and not get the cops to do it for them.
or bite the inside of your cheek and spit on them....
It's way past time to start shooting back.
Local law enforcement stopping motorists to be dragooned into participating in a PRIVATE “study?” Holy crap, I hope that county’s got deep pockets, because they just bought themselves a world of legal doodoo.
}:-)4
Maybe kidnapping as well. Isn’t that what they are charging OJ for telling those guys they couldn’t leave the room?
I hope somebody’s hide gets nailed to the wall for this!
LOL! My first thought also.
The abuse of power that was feared from the Patriot Act is actually alive and well in Podunk County, Colorado.
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